06 October 2009

Scandal! Strike!

There is a garbage strike here. The garbage people are not striking for higher wages or shorter working hours or safer working conditions. It would never occur to them to demand any of those things. The garbage people are on strike because they have not been paid at all. Just another reason that the folks in southern California could find themselves feeling very much at home here.

This is all mixed up with a scandal concerning the previous mayor. People started to get dissatisfied with the previous mayor when his chauffeur struck a pedestrian with the mayor's car and killed the pedestrian with that mayor in the back seat. Everyone could have overlooked that. But then his chauffeur drove into a second pedestrian and killed that one, too, again with that mayor in the back seat. Then it became general knowledge that that mayor, because of his self-perception as a man of importance, had a habit of ordering his chauffeur to drive like a bat out of hell through these little streets in this town to get from one place to another.

And by the way, did you note the fact that he had a chauffeur? San Miguel de Allende is roughly the same size as Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and neither city can afford to furnish its mayor with a chauffeur directly. The difference is that the mayor of San Miguel de Allende has ways available to him to supplement his official income. Therefore, the City of San Miguel indirectly furnished its last mayor with a chauffeur.

Now, that mayor was voted out of office, and a lady was elected. Unfortunately, the now former mayor took off and left town with the money. The lady who is currently the mayor is without funds to pay the garbage people.

That all is perfectly beautiful from my point of view. I became a bit fatigued with living in a place where the scandals involving public officials routinely involved those public officials getting caught screwing women they had not ought to have been screwing or making passes at other men who they thought were sailors in men's rooms. What kind of pissant scandals are those, for chrissakes? Hell, even that geek, David Letterman, does that kind of thing according to The New York Times on line.

This is a refreshing change of pace for me. Here prominent male politicians are expected to screw the wrong women. They would be in danger of losing the next election if they did not. I do not know how the men's room thing would go over here though. But all that aside and much more importantly. . . . . . . .I now live in a place where the latest scandal involving a public official arose out of allegations that he killed people.

4 comments:

We had a garbage strike here in Toronto just this summer. They used parks as temporary dumps. Apparently the city saved $30 million in the short term. The strike was about accumulating sick leave benefits. The city wanted to change to a short term disability system to save a heap of money they could spend on something else. Eventually they caved, giving the workers the option of staying with the old system or adopting the new one. I was kind of sheltered from the strike in that I live in a section of the city that under a previous administration, contracted out garbage pickup. We had other city workers on strike, but it wasn't the same.

I'm laughing up my sleeve at this. Yes I've been through garbage strikes, and visited places where there is no such thing as garbage disposal as we mean it. A volunteer colleague recently explained rubbish disposal Indian style as quite literally feeding the cow, something I will be getting used to. Perhaps you just need to find a cow.....

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